Excellent sound

MDR-Z1R WW2 22 May 2017 (Singapore)Verified Purchaser Verified

Have been using the Z1R for almost one month. The headphone has excellent bass and treble extension. With high clarity and dynamic range, I can hear details that were not easily picked up with my IEM (6 drivers). The Z1R also sounded natural and has good soundstage, especially width. The depth is also good. Do use the Z1R with a good sound source to fully exploit its capabilities. Using the Z1R with the balance cable gives wider soundstage and faster response.

Worthy Flagship

MDR-Z1R WW2 16 March 2017 (Malaysia)Verified Purchaser Verified

First off, build quality is exceptional. However one minor issue. Mine came with different stiffness of earpads. Sony Malaysia took about one month to handle my case and while it’s a long wait, the pad was replaced with no cost.
Now come the sound quality. Z1R is miles ahead of Z7 overall in this area. Z1R is versatile transducer with any type of music throw at it. Z7 is edgy and lack cohesion when compared to Z1R. Compared to similar price-point headphone, the Senn HD800S, Z1R is more satisfying and deliver every details HD800S known for with extra punchiness and meaty. Z1R also provide sufficient isolation for ambience noise and preserve more micro details in recording, while HD800S require total silent to perform as well as Z1R.
Z1R is no slouch when compared to higher price-point, king of dynamic headphone-Focal Utopia and king of electrostatic- Stax SR009. Both flagship to my ears dig deeper into music and realism is hard to beat. Z1R counter by being easier to drive(higher sensitivity), and as being closed, provide adequate isolation thus more versatile. Z1R is close to the performance of Focal Utopia than the Focal Elear. One who consider Focal Elear, should give Z1R a listen. To me, Z1R is much more complete than Elear in term of sound staging(more 3D, wider) and punch harder as well.
Stax SR009 has different tonal balance than the Z1R. Its more linear, airier and more to speaker-like presentation. While Utopia on the other hand has wonderful tone at presence band(instrument, woman voice) that really give the music a life. One with deep pocket should skip Z1R and proceed with either Utopia and SR009.
Sound signature of Z1R, out of the box has slight veil and bass can become overbearing with some music. Then overtime(over 50 hours) the tonal balance become more neutral, bass is became more textured. With my new pads, which has right amount of stiffness between both pairs give a boost on overall sound quality than the first originally came with it. Noticeable improvement are on the sound staging and eliminate mid-bass boost and sometime bleed into mid-range that haunt my original pairs. As footnote, my source is Tidal hifi, via Astell and Kern AK320 DAP.

Underwhelming performance after all the hype

Good solid built quality but sound performance is good but not exceptional; performs better with Chord Mojo than PHA-3 with Kimber balanced cables. Beyerdynamic T1(2nd Gen) has better clarity and tighter bass. Hopefully will perform better after longer burn-in.
Performs better than the Z7.
Quite comfortable to wear.

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